Who: Wren and Cassidy What: Breakfast Where: A ritzy diner near Aubade When: The morning after the masquerade Warnings: None
The masquerade had ended only hours before, and Wren had managed a a little sleep before the sun rose high in the sky. She rolled over in bed, onto her back and lazy with the desire to stay there in the softness and safety the blankets offered.
She took her time climbing off of the raised mattress, even though she knew it meant she would be a little late, and she washed away the smell of Centro and sex and smoke. She was completely sober, not having had anything significant to drink the night before, and she brewed herself some tea with the electric kettle as she dressed in creams and browns.
She didn’t have the money for a cab, not with rent coming due in a day and barely having enough to cover it, so she texted Cassidy to let him know she’d be late, and she began to walk.
Running late.
Cass had gone home and done just about the same thing - slept for a few hours after pulling his costume off. Coming out of the masquerade he was angry, and unsure, and confused. He’d been left without worries of anything for a short while, left with the sort of confidence and ease he barely remembered ever having at all. It was unnerving in its own way to discover that he still had that in him, somewhere, and yet he still felt stolen from. It had been a good night...in its own way. But it hadn’t been real.
When he woke the next morning, it was to a text on the phone that he still had in his pocket, he pulled it out, staring at the time, and pushed himself out of bed, swearing. His mind had so been elsewhere the night before that he’d forgotten to set an alarm of any kind, and he texted her back while searching for clean clothes. Me too.
He splashed water on his face, making sure all remnants of the makeup he’d worn the night before were gone, quickly shaved and dressed, and was out the door in fifteen minutes. He still looked like hell, and more than a little hung over, but he had dark circles most of the time anyway. He went downstairs to wait for her. He felt guilty for forgetting, but he’d just been so worn thin by the time he got home, and still with so much to think about. After everything that had happened the night before and his own conflict over what it meant, it would be good to see Wren and get breakfast, like two normal people. Coffee would be order number one, and he swallowed a few Tylenol dry on his way down the steps.
She received his text after she’d been walking for an hour, and she managed to get a ride the rest of the way. She walked past the gate slowly, her mind far away in thought. The night before hadn’t been particularly meaningful for her, not in the way it might have been for some. It had, however, come with realizations, and she hadn’t processed what they meant yet, wasn’t sure if she really wanted to. She was worried about her friends, but she hadn’t seen anyone hurt or injured at Centro, and so her step was slow and casual.
She smiled at the doorman, and she wished him a happy Halloween. He was an older man, and his hair was soft and snow white. She liked him, and the smile she gave him was a fond one. He let her pass, like he always did, and she walked toward the elevator, just as Cassidy was coming down the stairs. She changed direction, and she walked up to him and pressed her cheek to his, her fingers cold against his upper arms. “Good morning. I’m sorry I’m so late.”
The quick embrace was unexpected but appreciated, and he slowed to a stop as she approached, staying a step up until she pulled away. “So am I, obviously, so I think you’re actually on time,” he said, stepping down off the staircase. He was tired and still nowhere near done thinking over the night before, but he was glad to see her. Whatever else went on between them, he could just take pleasure in her presence when she was around. “Where do you want to go for breakfast?” He hardly ever ate out, so it wasn’t as if he had a slew of recommendations on hand.
“Somewhere close?” she suggested, slipping her arm through his without any level of hesitation. Her shoulder bumped against him, and she smiled sweetly. “I walked,” she admitted, looking down at her feet and wiggling them a little. She was tired enough that she was more soft spoken than normal, possibly less thoughtful in her requests and speech, and it showed in the amount of weight she was putting on his arm. “You didn’t sleep much,” she said observantly, having noticed how tired his striking blue eyes looked.
He let her lean as much as she needed to, smiling faintly back at her. “Sounds good,” he said. He did know one place close by. It wasn’t the most upscale in the world, but that wasn’t what he was looking for - all he wanted was something that was open, and that had coffee. And they did, in fact, have excellent coffee - there, choice made. He walked with her out the front doors and past the doorman. “I don’t think I’m the only one,” he said, thinking of the scores of people at the masquerade, and of the ones he’d seen filing surreptitiously into the Mezzanine throughout the night. “Did you?”
Cass hadn’t considered, even for a moment, that the woman he’d met in the Mezzanine might be someone he knew. Part of what was so strange about it was the fact that he thought he’d never seen her before, that it had been a random assignation, and while the thought that it might have been Wren crossed his mind, he swiftly dismissed it. He felt sure he would have known her.
“No,” she admitted. “It was a long night, and it was strange.” She looked over at him as they walked outside. The air was crisp and cool, all Seattle winter and the sun high in the sky without a hint of rain. “I couldn’t recognize anyone until the end,” she said. She didn’t mention anything about being uninhibited, because she hadn’t sensed that, not in a way that she would comprehend. “Did you have the same thing happen?” she asked.
It was a fair point. He hadn’t recognized a single person there, not that he knew many people, so he hadn’t noticed it particularly. “I suppose not,” he said slowly. “It was strange. I felt...off, the entire night. You?” He didn’t know how to phrase the question, because it was bizarre enough to escape succinct explanation.
He walked with her into the restaurant, which seemed to be catering to a clientele very similar to them - hungover party goers enduring their post-Halloween hangovers, seeking a meal they didn’t need to cook and coffee they didn’t have to brew themselves. He gave his name to the hostess and stood off to the side while the wait staff cleared a table for them. “I did some things that I wouldn’t have, normally,” he said, unsure if he should go on. Perhaps it had only been him, and what a horror that would be. like he needed more reassurance that he was inching closer to the edge each day.
She’d never been to the restaurant before, and the clientele looked tired and hungover, but wealthy despite their state. It was so far from where she lived, so far from her life, but it didn’t show in her eyes or her carriage as she followed him to a quiet table and took her seat. She didn’t open the menu. Instead, she ordered a coffee, and she gave him all of her attention. “What did you do?” she asked, her interest honest. For everything that had happened, the roller coaster that they had been on since they’d met, she did care about him. It wasn’t feigned, and it wasn’t fake, her interest, even if it came with the bittersweet end of a dream. She’d never had a client with his wealth, and she was having trouble finding her way into those circles again.
He ordered a coffee as well, opened the menu but didn’t look at it. It was a constant struggle for him to know what to say to Wren. He was never really sure what their relationship was meant to be, and it had gone back and forth so many times now that it was hard for him to find steady ground to stand on. He knew he preferred this over the act she put on when he was paying her, and he knew he felt guilty for the fact that she might be going to someone who would mistreat her because she needed their money. Standing with the weight of those two realities on him was a constant struggle, both trying to pull him in one direction or the other when all he really wanted was to be around her and for her to be safe. He thought of the woman in the alley and dug his thumbnail into his opposite palm, looking at the table.
He knew that Wren wouldn’t think less of him, and would still likely be as aware as he was, painfully, of who he’d wished he was with, in that moment. “I had-” And the waitress appeared at their table with their coffees. He waited for her to finish and disappear again, glancing behind himself to be sure she was gone. His eyes roved to the wall, and he sighed. “I had sex with a woman I’d known for about thirty seconds,” he said. He looked at his hands again. “I don’t know why, really, at the time...it made sense.”
She looked surprised, because she was surprised. “You did that?” she asked.
He looked up, not sure what to make of that reaction. “As I said, I wasn’t exactly...feeling like myself, at the time.”
She waited for her coffee cup to be filled, the decadent, expensive cream swirling in the dark liquid, before speaking. “How do you feel now?” she asked. “Did you ask her name, or did you speak to her after?” she asked, the curiosity genuine.
“I feel like I wouldn’t have done it under other circumstances,” he said, glancing up at her again, then back to his coffee. “That isn’t really...me.” He reached for the sugar. It wasn’t clear what that meant - whether he regretted it or not - partially because he wasn’t sure himself. “I didn’t. She was gone before I had a chance to do either.”
She sweetened her coffee, and she thought about her own night, about the nameless sex she had. “How are you going to find her again?” she asked, because she assumed someone like Cassidy would want to find her again. He wasn’t like she was; she wouldn’t go looking for the person she’d slept with.
The idea caught him off guard. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he answered honestly. “I barely spoke to her - I assumed she had no interest in me seeking her out. She left before I could get another word from her, I doubt she wants me showing up on her doorstep.” He stirred the sugar into his coffee, taking a sip and revelling for a moment in the warmth and the caffeine, his fingers wrapped around the mug. “It’s not as if I have anything to go on, even if I did want to find her. I doubt she walks around dressed as a cowgirl out on the street.”
If he was very perceptive, he would have noticed her pupils going wide with surprise when he mentioned the cowgirl costume. “What were you dressed as?”
He looked up from his coffee when she asked, but he didn’t notice her pupils blow wide. “Vampire,” he said. “Embarrassingly pedestrian choice in retrospect. The point was to be unrecognizable. I don’t have any particular affection for the concept, but it seemed like the sort of thing that would serve as a good disguise as well as a good costume.”
She wished she could lie right then, but she couldn’t, so she asked the one question that would make her choice for her. “Would you want to know her? Or is it one of those things you don’t want to know the reality of?”
Something in her expression gave him pause, though he couldn’t put his finger on what. Her question was a good one, though he didn’t need to think on his answer too long, preoccupied with that idea as he had been since the night before. “Only if she wanted to know me,” he said. He was done chasing women who didn’t want him and had no interest in ever knowing him. “I said it before - we only spoke for a minute or two before..” he lifted his hand and dropped it. “And she left immediately after. I don’t know if that was because of whatever was in the drinks last night or because she had no interest in there being anything more to it, but I certainly wouldn’t mind talking to her, getting to know her. But if all she was interested in was an anonymous fling, then that’s all there was to it.” He added another packet of sugar to his coffee - still too bitter. “I don’t know if she’d find me what she expected,” he said. “I’m not the same man today that I was then.”
She reached across the table, and she covered her hand with his. “I think you were wonderful then, and I like you very well now.” Her voice was soft, and the words not entirely explicit. He could ignore it, if he wanted. She was giving him that choice.
He looked across the table at her, uncomprehending for a moment, and then it clicked. “You?” he asked, all startled surprise, no displeasure - far from it. It was hard for him to believe that the woman from the night before could have been Wren, but then again, he hadn’t recognized anyone, had he? “I thought - I thought I would know you.” He felt a prickle, then, something difficult to define. Wren had no idea who she’d been with the night before, and he could have been anyone.
Jealousy. He felt jealous. Of himself. Even he could admit that made no sense.
Wren knew jealousy in a man’s eyes when she saw it. It came with with men who paid for things and then thought they owned them. This was different, though. This man didn’t own her, wasn’t paying, and she was surprised to see that emotion reflected back at her from the blue depths of his eyes. She squeezed his fingers reassuringly. “What is it?”
He opened his mouth, then shut it again. What was he supposed to say? “...I don’t know how to explain it without sounding unhinged, to be honest with you.” He doubted she’d understand. She likely wouldn’t welcome the feeling, either.
To hell with it. He’d stopped paying her because he wanted honesty from her - he might as well indulge her with the same. “I could have been anyone,” he said, taking a breath. It was bizarre, how saying it made that feeling of envy flare up even stronger. He knew it didn’t make sense, knew it was ridiculous, but he couldn’t help it. “I could have been anyone at all, and the idea of you going and...being with someone...” he trailed off. “I was right, I do in fact sound unhinged.”
“I could have been anyone,” she replied with calm candor.
He felt ashamed as soon as she pointed that out, even more so than before, and he turned his palm upward, tightening his fingers around hers briefly, staring into the black pool of coffee in his mug. “I know that.” But he assumed that she didn’t care, that it wasn’t the same from her end. He’d already resigned himself to the fact that Wren liked him, but didn’t love him, was interested in him, but not in that way. It seemed hypocritical when she pointed it out like that, but he hadn’t thought it was - because he’d assumed from the outset that she wouldn’t care that he’d slept with someone else - that, in fact, she might be relieved, think he’d turned his eye from her.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she coaxed, because the thoughts behind his blue eyes were flashing so fast that she could barely keep up with them.
He looked back up at her. “I didn’t think you would care,” he said, distilling it down as simply as he could.
“I don’t think about relationships like you do, Cassidy,” she explained. “For me, sex and love, they aren’t the same thing. Having sex with someone, it doesn’t mean I love them, and it doesn’t make me love them.” She paused, and she ran her fingers around the rim of her coffee cup. “I’ve never been in love before, but everything I’ve seen tells me it doesn’t exist, not like it does in stories.”
That stung in ways she obviously hadn’t intended but he couldn’t help but feel. “Nothing is the way it is in stories,” he said, quietly, smile faint and only there for a brief, passing moment. “But it exists. Trust me.”
The waitress came up at last, and he released Wren’s hand, ordering bacon and toast and scrambled eggs. Nothing complex, since he was fairly sure it was all he’d be able to keep down, if he touched it at all.
She shook her head when the waitress asked for her order. She didn’t want anything. “How does it feel?” she asked curiously. “How can you be sure you aren’t confusing it with sex or friendship or something passing?”
“You just...you know,” he said, feeling tired all over again, her statement about love and sex ringing in his ears. The waitress walked away, and he picked up his coffee again, sipping it for something to do. “You’d do anything for them. You’d die for them, you’d kill for them, you’d do whatever it took to keep them safe, and all you want is for them to be happy, no matter what the cost.” He set the coffee down again, eyes still fixed on the mug. It was easier than looking at her. “That’s how it is for me, at any rate, I don’t know how it might be for someone else.”
That didn’t sound like love to her. It sounded like something obsessive, something dependent. It sounded like it hurt, like it was about pain, and love was supposed to be about good things. It was the main reason she didn’t believe in it, in love, because everyone she knew who’d been in it had ended up hurt, and she didn’t think love was supposed to be about hurt.
When she didn’t respond, he just turned the mug around, so that the handle was facing the other direction, glancing up only briefly to gauge her reaction. He didn’t know what that meant, that silence. “If you love someone, they make life worthwhile,” he said, going on only because she hadn’t stopped him, and that made him feel like she hadn’t heard whatever it was she was looking for. “They make it good, better than it could ever be otherwise.” He was looking without seeing now, no longer just staring for a distraction. “I expect that some people don’t know that what they have is love until it leaves, or until it’s taken from them.”
“That sounds better than what you said before,” she told him, and she took a sip of her coffee. “But it hurts too much. People who think they’re in love, they hold on too tight, and they hurt each other, and they cheat,” she told him. “How does love turn into that?” she asked with a sort of candid curiosity; an observer.
“Any good thing can be corrupted,” he said, finally looking up and holding her gaze. “When you love someone it’s...it’s not pretty. It’s not the way they talk about it in books or poems. That’s a nice way to think of it but it just isn’t that way.” He thought that over, and then shook his head. “There are days when it is all of those things, when it’s beautiful and it’s good, but it will motivate you to go places and do things you never thought you could, or would want to, or were capable of. It’s like walking on a tightrope. With two people who love each other and are even personalities on their own, love can be incredible. But when the combination is bad, or something goes wrong...” he shrugged. “It can twist, the same as anything else. But it doesn’t always, and if it’s pure, it shouldn’t.”
“And this is all one person’s opinion, mind you. Everyone you ask that question will give you a different answer, which is why you shouldn’t. Love isn’t a subject for study, Wren. It’s just something that happens to you, and you figure it out the best way that you can.”
It made him feel melancholy, this topic, in the presence of someone he was in love with, who treated love like it was a scientific process that could be quantified and judged objectively. Love wasn’t like that, and Wren wouldn’t understand that until she found someone she could fall for. It clearly wasn’t going to be him, so he could only hope that she found someone before it became so foreign an idea that it never had a chance with her.
She listened to his words, but even more, she listened to the feeling behind them. He felt strongly about this, about his assertions. It still didn’t sound like love to her, and so she held her tongue. He disapproved of her lack of comprehension, and that too was evident in what he said (and what he didn’t say). “You’re disappointed in me,” she finally said, and when the waitress asked if she wanted her glass refilled, she shook her head no, and she stood.
“I’ve never been in love, Cassidy. I don’t know if I can be in love the way you say. I don’t know if I want to. I don’t want books or poems. I want something unselfish.” That was, she supposed, the long and short of it. She gave him a smile, and sad slow one, and she reached out and touched his cheek.
A moment later, she turned and walked out the restaurant, her hair hanging in her face and her expression blanketed by the brown tresses.